


Luck Be A Lady Tonight

by prodigy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Black Comedy, Gen, M/M, Obligatory Casino Episode, Rough Sex, Self-Destruction, Shitty Relationships, Tragic Inevitability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 11:18:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20257240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/pseuds/prodigy
Summary: In 2014, Elias Bouchard takes a rare trip outside of his comfort zone. Peter Lukas wastes a bunch of money. You'd be surprised how many things can go wrong for two beings of cosmic power.





	Luck Be A Lady Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Written sort of around the time of 148 - Constant Surveillance, with all bets off as to metaplot theories alluded to within.
> 
> **Content warnings**: Violence (not beyond canon-typical); dysfunctional relationship toxicity; rough sex; spy movie casino send-up.

"How much of your father's money have you wasted this year?"

"Is that some sort of 'how's your health?'" Peter Lukas tapped embers off his cigarette: a few fell onto the table glass, while one or two were caught, snuffed, and carried by the breeze, out over the swimming pool. The swimmers (few, at this hour) didn't notice. "Have you been reading interpersonal books?"

The Eye preferred heights. Peter was not one for mysticism--they were a lot of things, he often mused, the people caught up in this, in all of this, but _mystical_ wasn't a word he usually applied--and _aspects_, _domains_ were all sort of the New Age justifications he left to various cult-minded enemies, or overthinkers. So he wouldn't say that great heights were an _aspect_ of Beholding: but there was no denying Elias Bouchard felt more comfortable a few storeys up. In his own place of power, certainly. But also when he was compelled, every so often, to leave it.

Some of it was security. Someone like him would always prefer doors and doormen and guest lists. But Peter thought he was a little simpler than that, too--he liked a mountaintop, a pedestal. A dais. Failing that, a rooftop bar.

Elias ignored him. "Are you in the red? Any bad investments?"

"Not of which I'm aware--" Peter did think about it, and amended: "Well, there's always something up in the air. But no, I'm in Father's good financial graces. Why, were you hoping to change that?"

Elias didn't answer, not right away. This wasn't unusual for him--he was often distracted, to say the least. And if he wasn't, he liked to make out that he was: you could never speak to Elias Bouchard of the Magnus Institute and not be exceptionally aware that you were not his first priority. He liked to keep you waiting.

This was not a game Peter tended to lose. He smoked--Sobranie Black Russians, an impulse buy--and watched the swimmers. The ice melted in his drink. The waiter passed them by several times without topping off Elias's coffee.

Eventually Elias heaved an irritated sigh. "I have a request," he said.

Peter raised his eyebrows.

"I've business that takes me out of the country," said Elias. (Startled, Peter let ash fall into his own drink. Elias ignored that too--) "To the Riviera. Obviously this isn't how I usually attend to my affairs, but--"

"Are you saying you'd like to expense it?"

Elias crossed and uncrossed his legs. He seldom wore his best suits to see Peter; he seldom wore his best suits at all, in fact, which Peter supposed would pass for prudent in another man. He certainly met the standards of this hotel bar: navy windowpane print, fitted to his figure at every corner. He had a frame that always looked well in suits, in his outdated patterns, even that silly professorial tweed he wore on the 'job'--it hid that he didn't always spend money on them. But he could have worn something nicer today. Just not for Peter, this outfit said, and the precise angle of his hand with his elbow resting on the table--not for Peter, and not after seven months.

Well, Peter could have dressed up more too. This Oxford and needless jumper were expensive, but they weren't flashy. But he knew Elias wouldn't. So the arms race went.

"I'm saying I'd like you to come with me," said Elias, unmoving. "But I suppose that's up to you. I could make other arrangements. I just prefer not to stray so far unaccompanied."

Phrased so, it almost sounded demure. Peter laughed--"A chaperon?"

"A holiday. You can gamble at Monte-Carlo. There's a tournament on."

"A _holiday_. Goodness, you _researched_. Elias, what on earth is going on?" The Sobranie was burning down; Peter offered it to Elias.

Elias rolled his eyes--an over-casual affectation, probably. Like this was a casual request; as though Peter were just being a nuisance about an ordinary favour. When did Elias Bouchard leave the country? When did Elias Bouchard go _anywhere_? "I told you I could make other arrangements."

"Try this Sobranie. No, it's different--it costs more. Try it. What's in it for me?"

Taking the Sobranie between two fingers, grudgingly (not really, Peter knew what curiosity looked like): "A holiday to Monte-Carlo? The care and upkeep of the Institute's relationship with your family?" A challenging stare. "The pleasure of my company?"

"I'll think about it," said Peter. "Try it."

"Think quickly," said Elias. (He took a drag--with that attractive contempt native only to ordinary men who predated smoking laws, and to Elias--and made a face, and put it out immediately.) "I need to be there within three days."

"I take it you couldn't have mentioned this holiday to me any sooner."

Elias shrugged, or rather provided that twist of his mouth and minute shoulder movement that indicated a shrug.

"Well," Peter leaned in, closer than appropriate--no one could see them, and Elias didn't lean back and away, but his eyes flicked to one side--"Think about what's in it for me, then, won't you? And I'll think about it."

* * *

When was the first time he'd seen Elias? He didn't know. Not properly. His family didn't hold many functions, but they were mandatory, and they started young. At a young enough age he wouldn't have known the feet of one conversing man with a cigar from another. A little older than that and he was already shirking, skiving off--running away. _Peter has a gift for running away_, said Father once, with ambivalence. He couldn't say when he was first introduced, properly, to his father's ally; his father didn't like to give his sons opportunities for impertinence.

But he remembered meeting Elias. He was thirty-two--

"Younger than I imagined," he said to his brother.

Conrad looked at him sharply, so there must have been something in his tone, even then. "Yes, well, he remodels," he said. "Him and Rayner. You know they aren't like us."

But Peter was interested: in from out of the country (again), and bored, and--well, looking at someone to whom he wasn't related. Technically he was always among strangers: on the streets, in hotels, sometimes in hotel beds--but seldom did he witness one speaking to his own father. It wasn't so intellectual as that, though, being less generous to his young self; it was the tilt of the man's chin, the insolence in the way he looked through his eyelashes, the linen pressed to his slim frame.

Your father was God, wasn't he? When you were young? (And thirty-two was young. He didn't think so then, but it was.) To see someone else speak to Nathaniel Lukas without fear: well, it was meeting your first unbeliever, wasn't it?

In the hallway Peter bumped into him on a pretext--quite literally. They collided; Peter made an apology and smiled, and started to talk--Elias said, "And you are...?"

"Don't you know?"

That could've gone either way with Elias, Peter later realised; he'd yet to know how close he'd come to an irritated brush-off and never speaking to Elias Bouchard again. But Elias laughed, sort of. It was hard to get a laugh out of him with any real sunny content, anything accidental. Not impossible, but not easy. "It was a formality," he said. "Mr Lukas. Well, that could be anyone. Peter, is it?"

Later, in the library, Peter tried his luck again--more boldly this time, in front of his father. Nathaniel was not pleased, but Elias might've been charmed--just a quirk of his brow, and then he returned to addressing Nathaniel. But once they were finished with that topic, Elias took Peter by the elbow. (His grip was sturdy, like a businessman's. Transactional.) "May I borrow your son? He says he's back from Hong Kong. I've been, but not recently, and there's nothing like a firsthand opinion."

Peter's father had a look on his face--admonition, warning? Difficult to say.

"I won't keep him long." Elias's teeth glinted.

* * *

Seven months apart this time. In October 2013 they'd last seen one another, and Peter had gone on his way; now it was 12 March. Longer even than that, since he'd stayed the night.

It was close to midnight: still early in Peter's world, and meaningless to Elias. Peter poured himself a glass of brandy while Elias sat, legs crossed, staring out one of his broad windows. Or elsewhere, close or far away.

"You'd like me to make it worth your while," Elias said.

"Well, it's always worth my while. I like Monaco. It's very pretty, and the weather is mild. But if I'm paying, I could go anytime. You're the one who wants to go now."

Elias sucked in a breath, impatient and weary--well, he was always performing _weary_. So put-upon. So unimpressed. But he had to be, actually, sometimes; some weeks it had to sit on him more heavily, didn't it? It seemed like it might.

"I have a wager in mind," he said.

Peter's laugh was surprised. "Why, Mr Bouchard! I'm touched. But you have to know you're the very last person in the world I would bet against."

"Don't be tiresome. Nothing where I could cheat--"

"That doesn't leave much."

"The poker tournament in Monte-Carlo with the private buy-in," said Elias sharply. "You have enough accounts and identities. Buy into it and play. I know it's your sort of sport. I'll bet that you won't walk away with the end title. Prove me wrong."

Peter drank deeply (it was good brandy--well, it ought to be, if he'd been the one paying for it anyway); "You make a lazy and shallow, but attractive point."

"You're easy to amuse."

"What's the prize?"

Elias brightened. Give this to the man: he liked a punchline. Always cheered up when he got to his parlour-room reveal. "Six figures. Half a million. Oh, from me." He tilted his head back: "A question of your choosing. Answered truthfully."

Peter stared out over London, or what he could see of it from this storey. No further than that. His eyes were just those.

"And the same from you if you lose," said Elias.

"Couldn't we lie?"

"Peter. That would be boring."

No arguing with that.

Peter hovered by the penthouse bar, though he didn't like to think of himself as a hoverer normally. It wasn't indecision that stayed him so much as thought. He'd already decided, of course--had when the subject first came up. But that couldn't be any secret to either of them. He finished his drink, and then as an afterthought poured Elias a glass. "You'll need something nice to wear," he said.

"I'll expense it tomorrow, then," said Elias with only a touch of scepticism.

"You will not." Peter bent to set the glass down next to Elias; straightening, he brushed his thumb across the nape of Elias's neck. "I'll go with you to Savile Row. It's always best to have a second opinion."

Elias did not shiver: there was no getting a shiver out of him without his consent. But he tensed, slightly, and his breath came short.

"Well, then, it's a date!" Peter clapped his hands together with a smile. "Then I'll see you tomorrow? Well, I'll pick you up. Don't want the rabble getting in the way! Don't wear anything underneath your clothes you wouldn't want me seeing." (A wink in the reflective glass; an eye-roll from Elias in return, but looking away.)

He did take Elias to Savile Row, for a hasty refitting. Elias had a remarkable way of maintaining his measurements--divine embodiment, Peter had to think, and metabolism, because he definitely didn't exercise. If anything he'd lost a little recently. Peter stood aside and watched a stone-faced Elias hold his arms out and turn this way and that for the measuring-tape. He showed all the proud boredom of a hereditary peer, but Peter eyeing him and smoking another Sobranie got under his skin, Peter knew. Things were very different for Elias depending whether they were his own idea.

In the end he selected, and Peter approved, black cavalry twill and charcoal windowpane and burgundy herringbone. "Which do you like best?" Peter asked, and Elias said the charcoal; "then wear it out of here," Peter said, "we can wait."

Full bespoke was something of a several-week ordeal, but these alterations were quick. Quicker with Peter's pocketbook, and he smiled with munificence at Elias. "Now was that so difficult?" Elias was hardly a peacock (physically, anyway), but even he turned once in the mirror and admired the results with grudging vanity. When they walked out the door--before Peter drew his Lukas shroud over them both--his smile had the sheen of armour. He looked like someone you'd want to step out of the way of.

In the lift up, Peter kissed Elias. This was met with a moment's idle savouring--typical--and then Elias turned his head. "You're eager," he observed.

And Peter was, it was true. His blood was rushing. It changed his thoughts and everything he saw. _But so are you_, he could have said. _Listen to your heart. Or is that mine?_ Instead he backed Elias into the wall, that silly chrome railing. "It's been a while," he said into his neck.

"Even for you?" Elias's voice was dreadfully still. "My goodness. I'm touched."

That cut, because it had been--even for him. Not on purpose. It was not in Peter's world to think about fidelity, and besides, it would be ridiculous. But--thinking back--he hadn't, not even with strangers. He supposed he'd been preoccupied.

It cut. Elias smiled back, so keen and blue and well aware.

Peter shoved him backwards into his flat hard enough to trip; Elias half-fell, violently colliding with and sort of catching the counter behind him, which was worse than falling. When he let out a pained exclamation, Peter pulled him to his feet. The charcoal fabric came undone under his fingers, and tore loudly when it didn't come undone fast enough. (Elias looked startled. What a sight.) He considered the counter, and abandoned the idea and carried him to the bedroom.

They were both so pent-up. It was rough, so it was fast; it was fast, so he could be as rough as he pleased. If he drew blood Peter was unaware of it, though when he let Elias wrap his arms around him he immediately dug his fingernails into Peter's back; he did hurt Elias, though, he knew, and when he was done Elias put both his hands in his hair and took the deep shaky breath of someone contending with several conflicting sensations. Sweat was beaded on his forehead--in fact, he was pink all over, where he wasn't marked red and ready to bruise.

Peter gave him a fond kiss on the cheek. He then realised _he_ was breathless, and Elias was not. He could've sworn this wouldn't have winded him a few years ago. There was Time's obnoxiously wingèd chariot again. He took a theatrical pause, which also helped him catch his breath.

Then: "Oh, dear. I guess you'll have to wear the burgundy, won't you?"

Elias, in several large suit pieces, gave him a kick. His face burned, though, and Peter thought he was restraining the urge to squirm. A small victory. They were always small. Their body heat was unbearable, and Peter levered himself up: thinking, this was like a magazine question, 'what do you get the man who has everything?' What do you ask the man who knows everything? Do you know everything about me? Do you know what I'm doing? Did you really like the charcoal the best?

He sat up, contemplating a drink. He felt tired in general: jet-lagged, a bit. Next to him Elias stared, wide awake, at the ceiling. His marks would darken to purple and blue soon, but he was tireless. Soon he'd be looking for his dressing-gown. That was one thing about sleeping with Elias Bouchard, Peter supposed. You never had to worry about sharing the bed.

* * *

They passed two hours in Peter's Cessna Citation CJ4, as distant from the pilot as he was from them. When they made their ascent, Peter breathed in, briefly, the man's feelings--the strangeness of a life above lights and oceans, so far from regular rhythms. He wasn't weak or hungry, and so he left the man be. Still, his brushes with other travellers were--well, some of his only brushes at all. With connection, or with the great disconnection. The idea that some others walked the path he walked. The long road. The indifferent divine.

While he did, Elias looked out the window. He had a copy of the _Economist_ in his lap, open facing the contents.

Peter watched him read for a minute or two, and then checked his messages. He had two missed calls from his uncle, which was a thing that happened when your mobile was always on silent. He stood and walked a few steps to the tail of the plane--closed his eyes, and the plane was all his, for now, and he was alone. "Sorry, I was out of contact," he said when the call picked up. "What's the matter?"

"Where are you?"

"Hmm. The Channel. Is this important?"

His uncle was not charmed, but you couldn't do much with that generation. Peter had a theory that older Englishmen got humourless or they got snide, due to some sort of crisis, but he had to admit that his samples were heavily tilted by celebrities and Lukases. Not a friendly and humble lot, either way. However, his uncle also didn't mince words: a little context and he said, shortly, "Evan is going to die."

In spite of everything, Peter looked over his shoulder. He didn't know if it was the strain on his powers that he felt, in Elias's presence, or just unease. "You say that like a plan, not a prophesy."

"All I mean is that he's set on his course, and if he proposes to the Herne girl he _will_ die. It's the way of things."

Peter leaned against the lavatory door and waited.

"We haven't had an incident like this in a very long time," said his uncle.

"I understand. Is there some reason that you wanted to apprise me?"

There was a long and unpleasant silence.

Eventually, his uncle said: "If Evan goes, everyone's going to be called home to deal with it. That includes you. Expect a call from your father."

"I see. Well, thank you for the warning, Uncle. Could you tell Evan to hold off on suicide for about five days? That would be a good time for me."

When he came back, from the tail and into the world, Elias was still reading the _Economist_. Not that that meant anything. But it was also possible that he just wasn't interested. "Clear skies in Nice," he said without looking up. "Projected for the week."

"Oh yes? Are they right?"

"The meteorologists?" Turn of a page, a new article--("Banana diseases: Yes, we have no bananas")--and, "I do hope so. They are meteorologists."

They landed in Nice and a train took them to Monte-Carlo. Peter had, in fact, never been this way before: the only other times he'd been to Monaco, he'd already been travelling in France. From the look of him, neither had Elias. He leaned against the train window, but when he looked out it was with naked interest, a little wonder. He was not shy about experiences like this. Peter had never met another person as unabashed to ignore a companion in favour of a view.

Peter's passport read COLIN ANSTRUTHER presently; Elias's read JEREMY KIER. "Jeremy Kier sounds unlikeable," Peter had observed. "And like he has a blue checkmark."

"Colin Anstruther sounds like a victim of inbreeding depression, Peter. Also, you purchased these."

He did. He'd wanted to enter the poker tournament with a blanker slate; it lessened the likelihood that gambling debts would rebound upon him, or rather, upon angry fathers. And he liked disposable passports with disposable names. Elias, though: well, he had never seen Elias travel before. But it was a strange thing to imagine. Peter was aware that Elias had not asked him along chiefly because he feared attack, though certainly he was safer in Peter's company. He was Peter Lukas, of the Lonely. More likely, Elias wanted privacy.

He mulled over it, but there was no point. Their train sped along and Elias complained of magazine quality ("So do we have any bananas?" Peter enquired and was ignored); eventually they pulled into Monte-Carlo and they both took in the red rooftops. Elias's eyes travelled to the sea. Peter looked for the shape of their hotel. He held the car door for Elias, courtly, and took his suitcase.

* * *

It was of great amusement to Elias that they were staying in a two-bedroom Diamond Suite at the Hôtel Hermitage, with a terrace view of the Côte d'Azur, for €5500 a night. Actually, this was not the source of his amusement. The source of his amusement was the Hôtel Hermitage website, which listed the room as containing (along with the 'Belle Epoque spirit') a maximum of five persons. "Five persons," he said over his laptop. "This suite is for a maximum of five persons, Peter. You've been informed."

When Peter, not really paying attention, failed to laugh, he went on: "We are paying--"

"We?"

"You are paying five thousand and five hundred euros a night for this suite. I can't imagine they're going to keep track of how many people you bring in. Or, what, will twelve guests try to book it as a bargain? For their budget holiday to Monte-Carlo?"

"I assume it's the fire code."

"Of course it's the damned fire code. I'm very familiar with fire codes, Peter."

Peter supposed he was. He could hear irritability in Elias's voice--Elias was someone who lied, often and ably, but Peter wasn't sure he actually enjoyed it. He didn't like the pretence of ignorance or innocence. It needled him to be underestimated. You could not really get through an explanation of something he already understood without being interrupted--_yes, Peter, I'm aware._ Peter, not a patient man himself, understood; but there was no preventing it with Elias. He was singular. It was not easy to avoid telling him things he already knew.

He stepped out onto the terrace, where the Mediterranean awaited. Elias had been pleased to hear of the terrace, too; Peter hadn't commented, but in fact the idea underwhelmed him. He was wealthy, possessed of privilege and means all his life that had worn out their charms quickly. _Their charms,_ he'd once said to Elias, _but not their comforts, no. I mean, I wouldn't trade wealth for anything, it gets you everywhere in life._

_In my experience,_ said Elias Bouchard, a wit, _you would, in fact, trade wealth for anything._

The point was, life in the upper crust was all terraces and coasts and views. It was the sights of all the loveliest things from the most comfortable structures. It dried out.

Elias joined him by the railing, sleeves rolled up: he was always pallid in winter, not Lukas levels but still a shut-in. This holiday would put a little more blood in him. He leaned against it, back to the harbour.

"I've never met someone with such an anhedonia as yours," he said.

There was nothing to say to that. The sunset had a striking quality--the yellow shocking apart the blue--but Peter wasn't tempted to photograph it. Those all came out like Windows stock wallpapers.

"What a restlessness you have in your soul. I always find that remarkable about you. You have all the nervous energy to rattle chains, break a cage, catalyse--but you don't have a cage to break. You were born into an easy life. There's nothing you would stand to gain with rebellion. You'd only lose. I don't wonder that your father isn't worried by your antics--you spin the pedals on your bicycle, round and round. I imagine he's seen you do it all your life."

Elias was not speculating, prying into his mind, or provoking; in fact, he sounded fond. Maybe bittersweet. Peter glanced at him, in his burgundy suit; a piece of Elias's hair had come loose from the hold of pomade. Peter was tempted to brush it back into place. He did not.

"Do you really like games so much?" A tilt in Elias's tone, and he peered back at Peter.

"I like them well enough. They suffice. What I am more interested in is what you're doing here, Elias."

Elias had a troubled relationship with direct questions. It was why he was always avoiding Gertrude Robinson. With Peter, however, he could just shrug, like Peter's curiosity might roll off his shoulders. "I'm here to make a rendezvous," he said, "of sorts. Unfortunately, it's not something I can do remotely. And I'm here to enjoy a brief holiday with my most generous benefactor. That's all."

He put his hands on either of Peter's shoulders; then, like an afterthought, he leaned in and kissed Peter on the mouth. It was close-mouthed, as though decorously to a husband at someone else's wedding. Peter put his hands on Elias's waist and kissed him back. He was less decorous about it. He hid neither of them, though they weren't in greatly public view. They were just two men, standing on the terrace of a luxury suite in Monaco. Well, it was 2014; they had fake names and it wasn't populous--but they had enemies everywhere, didn't they? Anyone could see. Elias brought him here to hide him: they weren't hidden now. Did he know? Did it matter to him?

Elias pushed him away: or, rather, prised his fingers from Peter's shoulders and gave them a delicate tap, and Peter let him go. Peter touched his forehead to Elias's, impish--not entirely feigned: "Have you thought of your question yet?" he challenged.

"Yes," said Elias. "Of course I have. It was my idea. --I'd like to look at the room service menu. Is there a room service menu or is this some sort of chef's-choice rubbish? I really do loathe culture."

* * *

_What is your first memory? Your mother and father?_

Buttoning himself into a dinner jacket, Peter contemplated what Nathaniel Lukas would make of his wasting a single honest question to Elias Bouchard on something like that. Unfettered access to the great trove of human knowledge, and he could squander it on one memory of Adeline Magnus's face.

Well, he had time to think.

There were two bedrooms, a gold room and a red room. Peter took the red, which he christened, silently, the _queen room_; there was no real reason for this, they were of equivalent size. The king room's wall art was chiaroscuro, more abstract. When Peter had closed up and lay down for the night previous, Elias was still seated in an upholstered white chair, reading.

_Don't you worry about him looking at your dreams?_ One of his brother's blunter remarks. _Hard to rest easy, isn't it?_

_Oh. No._

_No?_

_No. He isn't interested._

Peter always dreamed of roads, animals, nonsense conversations. Contexts shifting like a parlour-game round robin. Echoes of the past mangled and spat out in garbled Dadaist primary-school 80s-music-video logic. Elias was welcome to it. But Peter had meant what he'd said, and knew it.

Still, he rarely slept well.

"The game doesn't begin until tomorrow," he said to Elias in the early evening, "but the participants are socialising downstairs. Well, something like. Reconnaissance. But with cocktail shrimp. Care to join me?"

"I'll pass. I'm not interested in explaining our relationship."

"That _would_ be a fascinating challenge."

Elias adjusted Peter's cummerbund with some brusqueness, which was like grown-up elbowing. "I mean I'm not interested in fabricating a cover story. It's tedious."

"You don't want to be my stepfather, Mr Kier?"

That unkind smile of Elias's, like a sliver of diamond. "Your mother likes younger men, then?"

"You've an excellent plastic surgeon." Peter brushed Elias's cheek with the backs of his fingers. "Be well. Don't stray too far. Not where I can't find you."

"I wouldn't dream of it." Elias thumbed his wrist and let go.

* * *

Texas hold 'em was a game that favoured a table of seven: a favourite number in its own right. Here in the reception lobby of the Hermitage, just a short walk from the casino, their hotel bar gathering numbered eight--five who'd come from the Hotel de Paris Monte-Carlo, and two others staying here. A six-two split of men and women. Peter wondered if he'd unbalanced their smart seven by buying in late. But they welcomed his addition to the pot, surely.

None were people he recognised. This wasn't perfect insurance from some sort of nonsense of an enemy persuasion, but it _was_ a relief. As far as he could tell these people were all bored, wealthy, and ornamental.

A set of the population that included him, he supposed. "My compliments to the bartender," he said with a gleam and a banknote (his Sobranies had run out, and he was getting sick of the taste); "Gentlemen, ladies, hello--" _I'm Peter_ nearly came out of his mouth. International super-spy in the making, clearly-- "I'm Colin. Colin Anstruther: the Bristol ones, not the Shropshire, though I'm sure there's a relation--Doesn't anyone grow weary of Texas? It's all Texas holding this and Texas holding that. Can't we play any other games?"

A few stared, while another nakedly tried to ascertain if he'd really presented himself at a private Monte-Carlo Texas hold 'em table with his pocketbook in tow and tried to convince everyone to switch to five-card draw. But a ripple of laughter and conversation ensued anyway; it stood to reason, the older of the women agreed, that while the rules of the _tournament_ were set, they could do whatever they liked at the _reception_. Someone produced a deck. They toasted and drank. They wound up in a few-hundred-quid game of lobby blind-man's-bluff.

Peter had two drinks in him and a card Sellotaped to his forehead, so he counted the night so far as a general success. But he could feel his hold on himself crackling. There were too many people here--here, in the game, and also about watching them, it was a spectacle. That was the price of excitement--spectacle--and it didn't necessarily hurt, but--

The trouble with the Ceaseless Watcher, the real trouble, was that you never knew when you were being watched, did you? Not really, you didn't _know_. You could suspect, but there was no confirming. Really, Peter's only confirmation that Elias didn't know the full contents of his mind was that Elias had never acted on them.

And you could never be certain.

_Attachment is the root of all suffering._ Something like an incantation not to lose a grip. Probably a lyric or a nonsense phrase would've done. (_Really?_ The words of an Argentinian woman he used to know, amused--in some restaurant or station or bedroom--_Does it occur to you that the Buddha might not have been talking about **you**?_ / _Well, of course not. But I have to make do._

_With Orientalist fads?_ She leaned in, forgotten, all but her voice: _Why not try something you've got a little more of a cultural claim on? The world is too much with you, Peter._)

No, no. That was the opposite of encouraging.

Peter folded (to the tune of four hundred pounds) and excused himself. When he was out of the room, by the lifts again, just another drunk toff in a dinner jacket, he was sure of his movements again. Unanchored. When he was completely certain he'd shaken off the weights of the room, he permitted himself to think about Elias. The question still remained as to what either of them were doing here.

He wondered if Elias had gone out. It was a great risk, unprotected; there was only so much protection Peter's company afforded without his presence. But going here in the first place had been a risk beyond his usual.

It was all very strange.

* * *

It turned out that Elias hadn't. He was watching television in the suite, or sitting in front of it, anyway--he looked up when Peter came in. "Don't get drunk while we're here," he said. "I'd prefer us not to die for stupid reasons."

"I've had two drinks." Peter unfolded himself on the sofa opposite, as Elias flicked him an uninterested glance (one from his genteel arsenal) and went back to a Wimbledon rerun.

"Then you're becoming a lightweight. That still isn't my problem."

"Why would we die, Elias? I'd like to hear more about dying, and the two of us, and why this is presently on your mind."

Elias was obviously hoping not to answer. Stonewalling, however, was still not a game he was going to win, and he ought to know that by now. After enough silence he meted out a: "Someone's always angry about something. We're always dealing with the most unreasonable people. Surely you--actually, I don't know why I imagine you'd know that. You faff about all the time and the Orsinovs and People's Church of the Divine Host hardly know you exist. You're not dealing with anyone."

"I'm dealing with you," said Peter, not unreasonably.

There was something terribly damaging to the ego about talking to Elias Bouchard when you were drunk (or tipsy, as Peter felt this was more fairly described). It was a solid reminder that so many of his ordinary negative reactions were just little games sidestepping his pride--if he had scorn for you, you _knew_. In this case he changed the channel to _Strictly Come Dancing_ and said, "Drink water before you go to sleep."

* * *

He did stave off a hangover. His bloodline was good for something. In the spacious shower in the morning he watched Elias unwrap, with careful fingers, each of the hotel soaps and bath products--hold them up to the light curiously, take a bit between two fingers and test it. He was probably giving them a mental star rating, each. It was horrifically cute. It was all Peter could do not to flick the hotel shampoo (_Menthe alpine_) out of Elias's fingers and use the conditioner (_Orange méditerranéenne_) to fuck him against the wall. It wasn't a dominance gesture, no spite from their last exchange, just lust of the restless morning kind. He settled for backing him into the tile and kissing him, drenching his hair again, until Elias got on his knees and sucked him off. That always took longer than he wanted it to, shorter than it could--but he liked that. He liked Elias's impatient ways. They had it in common, impatience; urgency was like laying their weapons down.

Elias looked up at him through his wet eyelashes. There was no really disarming him, of course.

Men got ready in the morning to such wildly varying degrees. It charmed Peter that he and Elias took almost the same amount of time to put themselves together, and was probably evidence that they were both boring. This brought a memory to mind: "When I was nineteen I used to sleep with this insufferable sailboat racer of about twice my age--really a complete lout, you know, with the most dreadful swagger, virile and not a whole lot else--it was a phase--"

"Evidently, yes."

"All I mean is that he put oil in his beard every day. He didn't _shower_ regularly, but you could count on him by eight-o'-clock for his daily beard-oiling." Peter was sceptical of things like this. Even in his this-winter-I'm-growing-a-beard moods, he found it needed little help. He liked to spend money, but even he could tell when a market was being invented. "I don't think my beards would hold oil well. Too blond. Have you ever grown a beard?"

"Yes." Elias parted his hair straight back with a comb: always in the same place. It was so tempting to muss it. He sounded bored, and Peter wouldn't have blamed him, but when he glanced back his eyes were sharp with interest--though in just one aspect of this story. "I never would have taken you for a masochistic streak. Even at nineteen."

Peter looked into the mirror.

"Well, you know me. I'll try anything once," he said.

Elias was still concentrating on himself: he had his shirt buttoned up (shirt-first-then-hair, like a sensible man of habit) and was finishing up his fingernails with a little buffing.

"Doesn't mean I'll try it twice," Peter added, and smiled at Elias's reflection. "Are you wearing the burgundy?"

The slightest eyebrow twitch in response. "You haven't left me much of a choice."

"That's true." Peter winked. "You'd best not misbehave, then, hadn't you?"

* * *

He did go out. This was a game he was losing, he was aware. The game was this: Elias had obviously not asked Peter to take him to the Côte d'Azur so he could stay inside and watch reruns of _Strictly Come Dancing_. There was something he could do here, necessitating his physical presence, that he couldn't do in London, and couldn't trust one of his little children with. Peter's aegis was a good and needful safeguard for his purposes. But he clearly didn't want Peter about for whatever it actually _was_, so--he sat, maddeningly, in the room and waited for Peter's natural cabin fever to propel him out.

Probably on one of these instances Elias would also go out. The others were a smokescreen. And all of this was gambled on Peter's curiosity about their situation being outmatched by Peter's aversion to being cooped up in a hotel room with another person for an entire day.

Admittedly an easy bet. Peter walked to the Prince's Palace and back, and sat on the lip of the fountain in the casino gardens, playing Candy Crush Saga.

The weather was fair, the sky almost loudly blue. Monte-Carlo was sometimes a port of call for cruises, but no huge ships dotted the Riviera skyline today. It was brisk but not cold, jacket weather--Peter contemplated the Mediterranean, but it was hardly a good time for a swim.

He had an embarrassment of riches when it came to options, really. This was a resort town, which meant that it was stuffed with fun and ways to have it. He could go lose money the old-fashioned way in the casino, or rent a car and drive up to the Tête de Chien promontory. Renting a car didn't appeal to him, but the promontory did, at least from photos. Peter decided to hike--he was a hardy hiker, he reasoned, and his tournament game wasn't for some time.

Theoretical hiking was always much quicker than the real sort. By the time he knew this, though, he'd already expended a bit of effort--and, a little winded, he was looking out over the architecture of La Turbie and eventually the blue of Plage Marquet. Which was quite nearly astonishing. Though, to be honest, not _as_ astonishing as TripAdvisor had promised. Really, there was no accounting for outdoorsy people.

But he was alone, for the time being, and he could see the bones of the medieval in the coast: the places where functional, fortified, had been built upon for living and then for tourism. Thinking of Monaco as an area that had ever existed just for itself, not as a cultural object, was strange; but it was easier to disappear into centuries, looking down from the trail.

And his reception wasn't bad. He turned the volume back on Candy Crush.

He was not alone at the summit of the Tête. The sensitivity that ran in his blood warned him ahead of time--ordinary old powers of observation, too, as there was a car parked--but that was all right. It wasn't much company.

He came up unnoticed, to what appeared to be a lone tourist taking photos. He was a strange figure, however, sticklike like a perched crow, in an autumn coat a little inexpensive for Monte-Carlo. His hair was dyed black, also, which gave him the appearance of a fan of The Cure circa 1998. The rest of him was tidy, though, cleaned-up and almost awkwardly nondescript.

Peter wondered if he was American. There were always a lot of Americans floating in resort towns. Well, in fact there were just a lot of Americans, and sometimes they got out.

He let himself be known and the tourist startled. Peter smiled, like he'd been here all along. The man stared, narrowing his eyes (which always made people look defencive, Peter thought, when in fact he knew they were wary); then he clearly realised he was being rude to a stranger, and forced something like an obligatory half-smile, upturned edges, not in his eyes. Then he looked down and away.

Could he make a castaway of this one? He had a shy look to him. He would have to sacrifice someone in Monaco, sooner or later--for himself, for the family. But, considering it, Peter suddenly knew that he could not. Not this one. He wasn't truly alone.

Well, there was no need to bother each other with one another's company. Peter looked out over the view he'd just gained, ready to leave the man in peace. The motion of his hands caught Peter's eye--he was, in fact, taking tourist cell phone pictures, lining up his shots in thirds.

His knuckles and the bones of his wrists were tattooed with the Eye.

Peter was gone. It was his reflex, his saving grace, and as natural to him as breathing. The man might've seen something amiss if he'd been looking right at him, and he hadn't; at this rate, he would think he'd lost track of Peter, and the encounter would be odd. It was no matter, because Peter was already gone. He could lose a tail on a two-lane highway and he could lose one, if he absolutely had to, on an isolated cliff in Monte-Carlo. There were grander tricks and more beautiful gods, but no one could ever go after him where he didn't want them to follow. So he told himself. He could feel his beating heart.

* * *

Later he was back in the downtown, and still gone--hungry, he thought, or maybe just rattled. Not weary. His blood was present in his body and he thought he could feel all of it. Of course he was consulting his memory, but he was drawing a blank. The Lonely wanted a sacrifice and he needed a feast.

He found it in one of the lonely gamblers at the Casino de Monte-Carlo, an old French widow letting baccarat drink up her pension. Once he sent her away, forever, he drank to her at the bar: a silent toast, comfortable in his power, to the lost.

_Our gods only eat their kin._ His father, this time. _Every last one of us, sooner or later. You should remember that, Peter._

_Every last one of us **so far**._

_Your arrogance will not protect you._ What a dear old dad he had. _I fear the example of Elias Bouchard has encouraged within you a certain exceptionalism. It is folly._

Which irked Peter, because who was exceptional, if not Elias Bouchard? And what had made him exceptional? His own choice. _To the lost_, he drank to his victim, _and to the exceptional. You didn't make it out. I will._

He was still rattled, which was decidedly not bored. He'd be more appreciative if it didn't have a significant time conflict with his poker game, which he went up to the room to dress for. Elias was still up there, though looked like he'd been down to the lobby restaurant, and now was reading a day-old copy of the _New York Times._ "You have the reading habits of an old man," said Peter.

"I am an old man."

"You have the reading habits of a Tory, then."

"Oh, for God's sake." That struck a nerve, which Peter found endearing--there was no real reason for it to. "Don't you have money to be losing?"

Peter grinned. "It isn't my fault if you have the reading habits of a Tory. I didn't choose your reading material, I've merely observed it over time."

"I'm not a damned Tory. The Institute is nonpartisan. --Where do you get off calling me a Tory? You know, your father is functionally a Tory. Your entire family tradition is sort of the essence of being a damned Tory, Peter, so I'm not sure what you're on about."

Peter leaned down and Elias smacked him in the side of the head with the _New York Times_. "No kiss for good luck?"

Elias unfolded the newspaper again, between them, and scowled at him over it. "What's got you so feisty?" he asked. But there was a little hook in his question; his gaze was searching.

"I'm thinking about what I'm going to ask you," said Peter, smiling, "when I win."

* * *

Peter thought about the man on the cliff with the Eye tattoos, and his blood kept him wide awake when he gambled. The other players shot him glances, maybe because he'd been so jovial in their pre-game blind man's bluff; now, at the table, he was silent.

He ignored them as they folded, concentrated on his hand and the odds. The trappings were what led you astray, he knew--it was theatrics that did you in. The maths were always the same.

By the end he had a single queen of diamonds in his hand, and it took a moment's realisation for it to sink in to him that, after his queen beat out the hand of the banker from Zurich, he had won the first round.

He came back to the Hermitage in a contemplative mood. He'd been hoping to come back triumphant and glowing with victory, and maybe also erotically impressive, to be quite honest. However, the tournament was only a third finished and while he'd walked away with winnings, money was the least of his concerns right now; he felt tentatively victorious, grimly pleased with himself, but 'grimly pleased' was not much of an aphrodisiac for throwing a man down on the floor and ravishing him.

Elias was waiting for him, unexpectedly: arrayed in one of the armchairs with his arm on either side like he was holding court, facing the door. It was the most interest he'd taken in Peter's game. The sight of him did give Peter a frisson, of a very different kind.

"Congratulations," said Elias, with the little crease of a smile.

Peter started to unbutton. "Were you watching me?"

"No. I know how you look when you've won, however."

"Good." Peter's fingernail caught on a button, in the dim light; Elias never turned hotel room lights up all the way, any more than he needed to wear reading glasses. "I wasn't much of a showman today. I'd rather give you more to watch."

"Wait." When Peter halted and raised an eyebrow, Elias got up, smoothly, and came over. "Allow me."

_Do you have any regrets, Elias?_

Elias's fingers parted each of the black buttons from its fastening. Undoing black-tie and white-tie fashion usually felt a bit silly; Peter remembered that the first time Elias had undone his shirt for him, with that sardonic air of domesticity, he'd felt like someone had injected something into his heart. The effect wasn't completely gone. He took a deep breath and thought more about his question: _What did you really intend the Magnus Institute to be, originally? How much of an effect did you have on the making of all of us? What did my family used to be, before you and Smirke had a hand in it?_

Rationalising, rationalising. Trying to make the most of it, trying to come up with a good use of the question: Elias's thumbs brushed his collarbone and Peter considered--_When was the last time you wanted someone else?_

"You'd have made a lovely one of us, you know," said Elias once Peter was down to his trousers and an unbuttoned shirt. "Not that there are many of us. But you have such a boredom in life, don't you? Such a desire for more." There was a little shiver in one of those last words. "I've always thought you were suited. It's a pity."

In the lowness of the light, Peter gave him an unbidden smile. It was a little bitter. "You really are incapable of processing anything through anything other than your particular lens, aren't you," he said.

"Well, yes, definitionally." Elias was undeterred. He tugged on the shirt, and Peter shrugged it off.

"No, beyond that. You're always like this. It's remarkable: I think you really do think everything is a compliment from your vantage."

This was not much in the way of dirty-talk by most people's standards, but it didn't need to be. The truth was this game Elias played really did inflame him, every time. Peter didn't know the name of it, not really, and didn't care to--was ready to fall prey to it, step in and let it snap him up, as he kissed Elias, half-trapping him against the wall. Elias tried to say something, and Peter crushed his mouth to his to shut him up; and that alone, he could feel, dragged a whimper out of Elias.

They were both prey to it. In every form, great and small. _What do you really want? What do you fantasise about?_ Those were questions too. Peter pinned Elias down on the bed of the queen room, where he slept every night, and he thought: _I fantasise about a world without chaos, without intrusion. I fantasise about a world that belongs to me._

(A lie by omission. They both knew it.)

He fucked Elias on all fours, with his hand over his mouth. That was something Elias liked--to be able to cry out without crying out, because he didn't like to hear his own voice carry. Peter understood. There were all these things. But he had his own demands too.

"You will never think of anyone else," he found himself saying, breathless: "You'll never forget me, will you? You'll never forget me doing this to you. You'll never be able to put me out of your mind."

Elias's grip was white-knuckled on the sheet. Sometimes he'd dig the pads of his fingers into the headboard, for some purchase he couldn't find.

Even muffled, his breath was ragged and loud. Peter was quiet, naturally, he was aware; it made the experience more humiliating for anyone he was with, and it meant he could hear Elias's breath seize up and the noise he restrained, like a scream he killed before it could make its way out.

It took Peter longer to finish, and when he did he was completely out of breath. At this point he was beginning to resign himself to the idea that ageing was happening to him, at least when it specifically came to sex; next to him, irritatingly, Elias sat up against the headboard and reached for a half-finished water bottle from the nightstand, though he had the grace to shiver and wince. When Peter had his normal respiratory function back, he screwed his eyes shut and let his head drop onto Elias's lap, the sheet between them. (Elias gave Peter's hair a weary ruffle.)

"I didn't mean all of that," Peter said. "Well, I meant it. But the heat of the moment certainly altered my wording. Of course you're going to forget me. All things pass away sooner or later."

"Is this one of your Extinction things again?" Elias squinted at him. "Don't tell me that's becoming pillow-talk."

"Oh--no. I mean, yes, everything is, technically--but this time I just meant mortality. The mortality of everything, you know, temporariness, one way or another, measured on the geologic timeline. Even you and I."

"This is why conspiracy theories like the Extinction appeal to you," said Elias with a measure of what might have been fondness. "It's because you're so fucking pretentious."

Peter craned his neck, just a little. "So you're saying you _will_ remember me," he said.

"I remember everything."

"And does everything," said Peter, stretching his arms--moving to a position closer to sleep--"also extend to me, Mr Bouchard?"

* * *

Another morning meant more time to kill. There were three scheduled matches total in the game, but Peter had a suspicion that two players were soon to drop out--one thing not everyone understood about the wealthy was how much time and goodwill they had to squander. They could change their minds on a whim at most any time and pull out of anything to pivot and go halfway around the world to an EDM rave under the Northern Lights, provided they didn't care about irritating anyone present. The chief currency of the super-rich was social approval. As he rarely had that to offer, he often found himself on the receiving end of bad sportsmanship.

He didn't particularly care, as long as there still _was_ a tournament to win. He had a bet associated.

Peter breakfasted in the lobby and mulled over it. _Is there anything, Elias, that you wish you didn't know?_

It was worth asking. They were such imperfect vessels, after all. The spirit so willing, but Descartes was wrong and the spirit and the flesh were the same, and weak. Peter's bloodline was pure, as pure as it was possible for a bloodline to be. Elias's commitment was total. And yet.

He did, however, come by the idea of making a prop bet. He had no other reason to socialise with his fellow players, but he knew it would look odd if he didn't at all; silent poker habits were one thing, total silence quite another. Also, he was bored, and trying to scour his memory for men with dyed black hair wasn't doing him any good.

So he went and then materialised with a copy of the harbourmaster's recent docking ledgers (photocopied, which was quite grainy) to review while he decided upon fellow players to enlist for his prop bet. He ended up settling upon three: a married couple and a young American. The couple were French, tied up in so many spirals of investment that to hear them explain it gave Peter an uncharacteristic sympathy for Jacobins, and the American a hotel-chain heir. He primarily chose them all because they were not English, and were less likely to scrutinise the story of Colin Anstruther. If he could remember it.

"Back in--" Peter rewound his memory like a VHS to remember where Colin Anstruther was from again. "--Bristol there isn't much of a gaming scene--well, I mean, there's a _gaming_ scene, you know, if you do esports, but I'm decidedly off of video games. It's bad for my attention span." (This was true.) "But I like to go abroad for things like poker and baccarat. And my country's a lot of things, but it's not really the French Riviera--though I also like Las Vegas. Lovely place. So many lights. Macau too."

"Vegas is awful," said the American scornfully. "It's basically adult Disneyland."

"See, you take it all for granted," said Peter blithely. "You're absolutely covered in Disneylands. Here we can't be such choosy Disneylanders. --Okay, so, here's what we're doing. We're each putting €200 in the pot for a very high-stakes two-hour game of Simon Says--"

"Mr Anstruther, you can't be serious," said the married woman, in tones of obvious glee.

"I absolutely can, Mme Clérisseau. But obviously this will be a stalemate if we can just sit here in silence, so Simon encourages you to look at this list--"

* * *

It was a low price to pay for his first Simon Says game in two decades, anyway, and it gave Peter something to do while he checked the list of boats in port and their captains. What he was looking for he wasn't sure--the only reason he was looking at all, during his scavenger hunt against the Clérisseaus and an American boy with a new fire in his eye, was because he was brooding on the man on the cliff.

Specifically, he was brooding on his coat. The man's coat was probably the least remarkable thing about him: but it was also sturdy and unfashionable. It didn't look like what one would bring on an aeroplane to Nice in the spring.

It looked a bit more like what one would bring on a boat. Or a car trip, Peter conceded. Or an aeroplane, if one were stupid. This was not his favourite form of detective work, because it, in fact, was stupid. But he was lacking in other options.

He was looking to see if anything especially Fairchild-esque jumped out at him, really: or Maxwell Rayner-esque, although the odds of encountering Maxwell Rayner's people during the daytime seemed slim.

In fact, all of these odds seemed slim. Peter was close to going back to his acquaintances and Simon Says (though he had an additional thirty minutes before they reconvened), sitting on a wall by the quay, when his eyes travelled over the same name several times. Captain name Vallverdú, R.; vessel name SEA LIGHT. He thought he was rereading mechanically for a moment, and then he recalled.

He blinked. He furrowed his brow.

Well, thirty minutes wasn't so little, was it? He took a stroll.

The _Sea Light_ had the look of a commercial fishing vessel outfitted with a paint job that befitted a cheap yacht (a genuinely cheap yacht, not just a yacht that didn't meet Peter Lukas's standards). It was moored near the end of one of the docks in the marina. It was not a boat he'd ever seen before, but he didn't expect it to be. He didn't know it from experience--just from memory, once, on a mentioned list rattled off to him by a crewmate--a list connected at the hub to something that was also connected to the name Vallverdú. Credit that Catalan name for being memorable, too.

The hub connecting them both was Mikaele Salesa. _Sea Light_ was one of his cheap alternate vessel registrations, as Peter recalled it. Vallverdú was definitely one of his passports.

That, or Catalonia was populous, and Peter was stalking some complete stranger. There was really only one way to find out, anyway. He hopped on lightly, unhidden--steps came thundering up the stairs of the small hold underneath him.

They barrelled up and something hit him hard in the side of the head. Pain burst there and he reeled, in and out of proper awareness and probably in and out of tangible perceptibility; in the middle of this, he fell backwards, hard onto the deck. The impact skinned his palms, superficially. In his pain and dizziness he squinted up at Mikaele Salesa.

Salesa glared back down at him. It was midway between the settled glare of defence it'd started in, actually, and a perplexed expression--he'd clearly recognised Peter about a second after he'd hit him, but didn't look remorseful or abashed, just puzzled. "Peter Lukas," he identified him, as though for a nature documentary. "What in God's name?"

Peter touched his head. No blood--hopefully nothing too weird to the eyes of the public, either. Bumps took a while to form. Probably? "Hello," he said. "I didn't know you were in town."

"What in God's name are you doing here in Monte-Carlo?" said Salesa, more to the point.

"I--" It was not beyond Peter's notice, even dizzy, that this was not an easy or safe question to answer straightforwardly. He looked up at Salesa instead and tried to gather what he could about the situation: but frankly, this wasn't a lot. He knew Mikaele Salesa. He always looked sort of the same--salty, businesslike. Peppery. Now he looked like that, but dressed a little better for Monte-Carlo, and angry.

"I'm playing a very elaborate game of Simon Says," Peter said. "For a prop bet. I mean, right now."

Salesa gave him a look. It wasn't the look of a man on the verge of an unpleasant utilitarian murder, so that was good, but neither was it especially flattering.

"... You know, I imagine you are," he said, and sounded like he believed it, with all the damning things that implied. He sighed and looked, for a moment, beyond where Peter was sitting, to the docks; he looked at his watch. Peter was too discombobulated to put these things together usefully. "Christ, Peter. You've chosen a hell of a day to take a holiday."

Peter could disappear, he supposed. He could go away now, take his chances Salesa wouldn't shoot him in the moments he had, and talk to Elias. Or talk to no one at all--just pretend nothing happened, put his hair together and smooth his shirt and complete his Simon Says match, hopefully to victory. Shield himself and Elias, avoid everything. Play poker and take them both away at the end of it none the wiser. And it was no surprise to himself to know that this was the most tempting option of all, by far.

He rubbed his palms together, feeling the scuff. The sun backlit both Salesa and the wheel, so he looked away, off into the water. He considered what to say. One thing he did appreciate about seafaring men was that without an immediate task at hand, they tended to leave him to think. Salesa, he could tell, was a little more impatient than that just now. Nevertheless he did.

"Well, in fact. I'm afraid holiday's not quite the right word for this situation."

* * *

Peter would've preferred to talk at a cafe, over something headache-curative. Salesa walked him out onto a sandy strip near the harbour instead, which gave him the faint impression that he was about to be executed. He did not attempt to execute Peter, though, but instead stood near a rock.

Mikaele Salesa was in no mood for pleasantries, which Peter supposed was just as well. Peter sat on the rock.

"You're certain we're secure here," said Salesa. "You said we're unwatched."

"Nothing is certain. Least of all with Elias. He has a power beyond your fathoming, and probably mine. But if you know his protege," Peter shrugged, "then perhaps you have some idea."

"She's hardly his protege."

"Not my point." Peter shook his head. "I can't guarantee your safety. I also don't know a great deal about the situation, either, so you may be better off not speaking to me at all. Elias doesn't let me in on a great deal, but if I'd intended to deceive you, I'd have manifold better ways of going about it than nancing about on your ship in the middle of monetised Simon Says."

Salesa fixed him with a grim examination, but Peter knew there wasn't much to examine. What he was looking at, Peter supposed amounted to the same as always: something of an on-and-off friend, a member of the Lonely and thus no more trustworthy than a cat, and about as reliable, but someone he had known for quite some time, and come to be able to predict. Peter liked the romance of being unpredictable, in theory, but in most cases he was aware he was not. He tended to save that sort of calculation for where it was important. In general he did things for the same reasons--for fun, to allay boredom; for the vague and lazy betterment of the Lukas family; for his strange and, perhaps to Mikaele Salesa, foolish connection to Elias Bouchard.

Or maybe people saw his father when they looked at him, and his other ancestors. Or just someone they--that Salesa--didn't feel like dealing with, but who had surfaced all the same.

Peter understood that feeling. He couldn't say he shared it: in fact, Salesa's reappearance filled him with nothing more than a bright and genuine curiosity. What _were_ the odds?

"This doesn't seem like your manner of port," Peter observed.

Indeed it didn't. Salesa could usually be found in Singapore or Naples or San Diego, places where business could be done in large quantities: he was as founded, as a person, in doing business as Peter was not. Salesa looked uneasy about answering, so Peter prompted: "I saw a man with sort of Robert Smith hair, dressed for the weather. He had some interesting tattoos. Is that one of Elias's assistants?"

Salesa startled, blinked, stared: "What?" And then stared again and creased his forehead: "... No. --Christ, Peter." He seemed to be weighing his odds, but his odds lay, probably, with what goodwill he had with Peter: Peter wondered, distantly, if he was still considering whether to kill him. "That's Mary Keay's son," he said eventually. "Gerard Keay."

The name did click. The sea was at sort of a lulling interval near them, tide lowering and leaving behind kelp on the sea-strand.

Peter glanced at Salesa, but now with silent regard and the cold armour of the Lonely all around them. They were on a silent shore, impossibly far from any France there was to be known. If Salesa was unnerved he didn't let on.

"Are you here with Gertrude Robinson?" he said.

The answer of the silence was not the one he wanted or hoped for. But it was definite, all the same.

Peter looked out over the empty swells. "This is very dangerous," he said. "I assume you and she have some manner of protection in your own right, or _he_ wouldn't need to come looking, would he?"

Again no answer from Salesa. Peter rarely found himself in this position--interrogator, not interrogated, and seeking, not avoidant. He was aware of a stoniness within him that it brought out. Perhaps it was always present, and he was just not aware of it. He always liked to think of himself as flighty.

He did not feel flighty. He felt metallic.

"This is dangerous, Salesa," he said again.

"Not half as dangerous as what you're doing," Salesa countered. "And all unnecessarily. You and your Extinction--"

"You know very well it isn't 'my' Extinction," said Peter.

"--and your family and Elias Bouchard. You don't have a friend in the world, Peter. You have a lot of people who are going to be very unhappy with you, and you don't have any idea what that means."

It was not in Peter's plans for the day to be hectored like a foolish child and it set him on his back foot, which didn't make his feelings any warmer. All the more uneasily, he knew it was from something approaching--if not concern, then advice. Sincerity and not wilful condescension. That made it worse. "Being alone in the world is something to which I am unusually accustomed," he said frostily. "As a matter of fact."

"You have no idea," said Mikaele Salesa.

* * *

He did lose his prop bet. But it was all very well: you won some, and you lost some. The nature of the game. You won some, you lost some, you lost some. You lost some.

His head was still hurting as he made his way back to the Hermitage. The true fact of injury was that it always felt like several exquisitely individual pains at once, each disturbing. His head was bruised and he could feel blood filling a lump on it, slowly. He could also feel where the skin had been lightly sheared by the scrape, on his temple and on his palms. The prickle of the blood and the dermis exposed to the air. The throbbing of the headache building.

He took the lift up.

Elias had arranged himself casually half-sitting half-lying on the couch, this time fiddling with one of his email apps, probably his work inbox. He didn't look up, as looking up was just an affectation with him. His suit was hung up in the closet and he was wearing the hotel robe over his pyjamas. There was no material evidence of whether he'd been out, and there didn't need to be.

About an hour remained before the match. Peter shut the door. Elias kept fiddling with his mobile.

"No kiss for good luck, Elias?" said Peter from the entryway.

Elias did look up. You could also credit him with this: poise. Monstrous self-possession. He wasn't one to jerk up in fright over anything important. He just flicked his eyes up, half-or three-quarters-lidded, exactly as much as you deserved from his celestial attention.

Peter walked in, hung up his coat. He could feel Elias's eyes follow him--which was poisonous and vindicating. He took a few bottles from the minibar and poured himself a drink. A gin and tonic. Usually Elias was the gin and tonic person, and Peter liked more interesting cocktails. Take him anywhere with a neon green tiki novelty. So many holidays in a dilettante's life.

"I wonder that you haven't been entirely honest with me," he said to Elias when he was finished.

"Did I ever claim to be entirely honest with you?"

"You are personally chasing your Archivist about." Peter stirred. "Am I to take it there's trouble in paradise?"

Elias glared at him. Peter wondered--was he frightened? Of what? What in God's name did Elias Bouchard have to be frightened of?

Maybe Peter would ask him _that_, he thought acidly. Not that. Not that. Maybe: _Have you ever been afraid of me, Elias? Do you ever wonder what would happen if I really didn't care what you thought?_

That was two. Silly, silly. Peter drank. "I don't feel the need to be pedantic," he said. "And I don't see the point. There are understandable pretences and then there is grave danger. For both of us, for my family. You could have told me that things are coming to this."

"For _both of us?_" Elias spat, and Peter realised that what he was wasn't _frightened_\--it was _defencive._ "Don't be craven. You'll be fine. Your family will be fine. Even if the Institute and I were to vanish from the face of this Earth, I imagine you'd go on famously, squandering your existing money. If you're worried about running out I just suggest that you don't _reproduce_."

"I have a game to attend," said Peter abruptly, downing the rest of his drink--his shoes were still on and he sat down to take them off, to change into his formal attire. "If you'll excuse me, I can't really be doing that looking like I've just been rolling about on a beach. Best wishes, Elias. Try not to be assassinated as a consequence of your own actions."

Elias bit his lip. For some reason Peter didn't want to look at this, and looked down at his clothing again.

"No good-luck wish for me, then?" he said, a bit cruelly.

He received nothing. This shouldn't have been disappointing, as really, he ought've been used to it on this or any other holiday.

* * *

He won. He nearly lost, but he put all he had in, or all he had with him and accessible, anyway--and he won. He left the Casino a victor, seven drunken idiots toasting his name, two-thirds in the lead, and he went back.

Elias was waiting up for him. Peter was sober, but he didn't feel sober; he felt electrified, like the spectre of MDMA or cocaine, before those things wore out their pleasures. But that wasn't it either. He'd tried a lot of drugs in his life, especially his young life, but none that really succeeded in making him feel out of his right mind. All of them just put him in a clattery, constrained version of his right mind. He didn't feel like he was in his right mind now.

Elias got up and stared at him, level and detached. How foolish, Peter realised, to add another fantasy to his ever-growing castle: that Elias was ever going to feel apologetic about something.

Peter took hold of him by the collar and pushed, or rather walked, him back several steps, not as violently as he might. Elias coloured with confusion, rewardingly--it was the wrong direction.

They had the gilt furnishings all around them and the chiaroscuro painting, the one that made Peter think of expensive stock photography. He threw Elias down onto the bed--the untouched, made bed--of the king room.

Then he was violent. Not unprecedentedly, but he relished pulling the robe open and finding what covered Elias to be flimsy and useless--Elias bit him and cursed at him, but that wasn't unusual either. But there was venom in all of this. He didn't bother with anything proper or out of a bottle; I think you can take it, he might have said, but he wasn't in a mood for panache. When he thrust into him Elias screamed, properly, and immediately shoved his own fist into his mouth. Then he hit Peter hard and pushed him, with a, "You fucking _bastard_."

Peter stopped.

Elias blinked, wild-eyed. His irises were dilated wide, like a prey animal. A strange illusion.

Peter just stayed there, half-dressed and buried inside him and propping himself up on his arms. Elias stared with obvious surprise--then dismay and embarrassment, discomfort: the beginnings of indignation, irritation, _you've broken the rules, don't be like this._

"I'm not playing this game," said Peter.

Elias was breathing heavily, dishevelled, clearly at a loss. Peter didn't feel much more together, but he pulled enough of it in to say: "I'm not playing this game. No more of this. You wanted me to stop? I'm stopping. Unless there's something else you want?"

Underneath him, Elias was still, or half-still. No one was quite still, ever, and certainly not when they were being fucked, or just close enough to hear another person's breath. But it still brought him great pleasure to feel Elias first tense up, and then shiver, and open and close his hands--trying not to say something, or trying _to_ say something. Forcing something inside of himself where it caused him pain: Peter wasn't sure he'd ever _seen_ him in pain before, not real pain. Nothing below the surface. Is this all it took? It was too easy, then.

Too easy. It wasn't real. It was just ugly.

Within himself, still, Peter discovered he still had the capacity for shock. It came out when Elias put his hands over his own eyes, unmistakably against tears. Tears Peter never saw. He only heard the hint of them in Elias's voice.

"Fine," he said. "Please."

"Please what?"

What was it he wanted to hear?

Elias's voice was shaky. "Please fuck me," he said. "Please. Hurt me. Use me. It's what I want from you and it's what I'm trying to get."

It wasn't triumph that lit him up, Peter was fairly sure afterward. But he couldn't really put a name to what it was.

This time he was sure he had hurt Elias--not that Elias was an easy person to hurt. Well, he was and he wasn't. Soon after, it was the first thing Peter thought about, was, what kind of man am I turning into? But this was, in fact, sort of an absurd question, because in fact _he_ was in pain--his head still hurt, his hands and back still hurt, and they all throbbed more from all of this; when he came and Elias cried out (for the second time, and a different cry, one Peter didn't understand), the blood in his head threatened to stave in.

Elias immediately pushed them apart and sat up and took Peter's head in his hands, touching the abrasions with his fingertips. This Peter found confusing--the interest in the scrapes was touching, he thought, but they really were just scrapes--until he realised Elias was trying to determine, by whatever measure, whether he had a traumatic brain injury.

He must've passed the test. Elias just stroked his hair.

There were tracks on Peter's face, coming from his eyes. He didn't remember tearing up. Elias brushed his thumb over one of these too.

"Everything will happen as it's supposed to happen," he said.

Peter curled, somewhat. "You believe in destiny?" he said. "What a horrible thought."

Elias's hand passed over the top of his head. He could be a faith healer, Peter thought, somewhere. A liar who was a balm to the hopeless. Instead he was the very opposite.

"I believe in intention," said Elias.

* * *

In the nighttime Peter went up on the roof, which turned out to be a remarkably serendipitous decision.

He left Elias where he was--which was sitting up against the headboard of his bed, silent. He was openly watching something, Peter understood: though what, he had no idea. There was no use in disturbing him while he did. Peter certainly understood the value of being undisturbed. Still, he was not exactly in any state to sleep, even with his headache waning after a few ibuprofens. He debated going out into Monte-Carlo at night, but aside from being potentially full of enemies and unhappy friends, it wasn't much of a nighttime city. Give him Paris or Dubai, at least, but not this little palatial cage.

He climbed a service ladder and went up with a packet of smokes (just Dunhills) in hand, though he wasn't really of a mind to smoke. It just seemed better than brooding.

This was when he noticed the strange state of the maintenance lift and access stairs.

His first reflex was still concealment, which served him well in life. Unfortunately, it didn't do much for his cell reception. After shrouding himself, trying to text Elias, and failing, he resigned himself to existing fully in the human world and sent Elias a text: _Not sure why but the maintenance/service access points look tampered-with. Locks are gone from the doors, and access pad removed. Am I being paranoid?_

A moment later: _Are you on the rooftop?_

_Yes_

_I'll be up in a moment._

Soon, Elias emerged from one of the suspicious service stairs, with his eyes narrowed to pragmatic focus. "No cameras either," he observed once he joined Peter. "I should have guessed."

"We really ought to leave," said Peter, and meant it.

He didn't expect Elias to consider it, though, and indeed Elias did not. He was not offended, either; he just looked a little faraway--"And why come all this way?" he said. "No, it's all very well. This is a better point, anyway. I'm less concerned about the rooftop than I am about the basement. All manner of utilities operated out of there--well, our lives could become very difficult. Unfortunately it seems those cameras have also been removed. I should have a look."

"I think it's better if I do," said Peter. And, once Elias hesitated--"I won't bar your way."

Elias glanced at him, and away.

"I don't suppose you're about to tell me to 'stay in the room,'" he said.

"What? No. The room's no use. You should go to the lobby bar, it's still open. Remember where there's people there's human hostages to good behaviour."

"You really need to find a better way to put that."

He saw Elias down, though, in the shroud of the Lonely. "Order me something for when I get back," said Peter, with the ironic bravado of someone fairly certain he was about to search an empty basement but with a slight possibility of facing mortal danger, and not wanting to sound stupid in either case. He left Elias chatting with the bartender about something--something half in English and half in French, about old times Peter didn't recognise and hadn't seen. Their voices faded in the stairwell.

* * *

He did find an empty basement. The lights were all put out so he used his flashlight app--_That will blind you if you aren't careful_ came Elias's unnecessary thought, or message, or information: it was difficult to say. What was most unnerving was that the thought inserted itself so naturally, like he'd had it of his own volition.

This was not something to which he planned to get accustomed. He shone his light where the cameras had been detached: _there should be a fourth_ and indeed there was.

_That's the air system, a little difficult to selectively poison, on account of it being air_ Thank you, Elias--

_There should be switchgear in here. See if you can find it._

He did; next he cast about for _the transformer, a building this size should have one or two, and if you find them you can rule out anyt--_

Peter squinted and let his eyes adjust again, upon finding a shape he didn't expect. He looked at it head-on for Elias's benefit, and received: _Oh, God, what?_

Probably rhetorical, Peter supposed, as oh-God-what didn't seem like a question the Ceaseless Watcher should be able to transmit. More like an emotion: _is that C4?_

Also probably not something the Ceaseless Watcher could express literally. What it/he could express was a rhetorical question, meant to convey: that's C4.

He tried--this was all extremely surreal--to remember what he knew about C4, and then determine how much of this was actually from Hollywood movies. _This isn't the Old West, it won't go off without the blasting cap._ Then, promptly: _Do **not** look for the blasting cap. Leave._

What did a blasting cap look like? Immediately he had something like a Google Image Search of memories he didn't actually have--oh, this was heady, though disturbing, and less heady knowing it wasn't Knowing, just an aggravated Eye providing him with things in a pinch. _She is smarter than that. But not always in possession of more resources. It's worth removing--like **so**!--look!--if you can find **this**._

Peter rummaged, faintly aware he was rummaging in a hotel basement through pieces of certain death--and, finding what he was looking for (_yes that_) wondered what he was supposed to remove it with.

This was a mystery to Elias too, which was not a good sign.

Well, there were few options. Maybe expensive novelty multikit knives had their uses--_I **suppose** that will work. You know that's an impulse buy gift._

But the point was, it was an impulse buy gift with a _sharp edge._ With a minimum of musings on his own mortality, Peter set to work with the little knife.

He did not die. Neither did the other residents of the Hôtel Hermitage. All that Peter became aware of was that he was, in fact, breathing extremely heavily--that his heart rate was dreadfully aerobic--that he was awake. That the air of the maintenance basement was cold. That the light was piercing, and the blasting cap in his hands was light: _that's still an explosive, Peter. That's the wire you still need to get through--_

When that was done he was left holding a blasting cap in his hands, still attached to a small package of C4. He wasn't really sure what to do with it. He put it in his pocket.

The Hôtel Hermitage basement was clean, he thought absently. Really impressive on the cockroach front.

He was not alone, or soon not to be. Father and Great-great-grandfather and God and Fate all made him beautifully difficult to sneak up on. By defence, he stepped out of human view--cutting himself off--and got onto the stairs up.

And then there was something strange--a collision, something that broke the sensation, snapped or flung him right back into the human world. He was half expecting Mary Keay's son. He found himself staring at a woman dressed for hiking. Very out-of-place in Monte-Carlo, he thought: but he recognised Gertrude Robinson when he saw her.

_DON'T LET HER TALK TO YOU--_

She had a firearm in hand, with a silencer. Unsurprisingly, she pulled the trigger.

Being shot was not the worst thing Peter had ever felt--but that just made him question, sickly, his life choices. It hit him in the chest, or side, and tripped him back into the stairwell. (The bullet went through, he was fairly sure: maybe?) All that occurred to him was to hold up the bomb like a baby. "Can we not," was what he came up with.

Gertrude couldn't argue with that. She kept the firearm level, but peered at him, bleeding with the world's worst flour-bag baby. "You really ought to reconsider your taste in men," she said.

"Are you really trying to destroy this entire hotel with everyone in it?" Peter didn't care about not sounding incredulous. He wasn't so much aghast as taken aback. He always thought he understood how human values worked, honestly--he spent so much time near them! But here they could always surprise you. "Isn't that against the. The. The Geneva Conventions?"

"I meant to destroy this hotel with Elias Bouchard in it, Mr Lukas," she said levelly. "And you also if you didn't happen to leave."

At the moment, Peter was having a hard time explaining to himself why he hadn't left, much less Gertrude Robinson. It all seemed fairly distant. "Okay," he said. "Well, you can't. --That doesn't really sound mathematically worth it."

Did she look pained? Or maybe everything looked pained right now. Every nerve in his torso was inflamed, he thought, especially the ones his lungs touched--it was awful, how knowing words like 'inflamed' just made sensations more disgusting. Perhaps his theory of mind was degrading, and everyone in the universe was pained.

"It's worth it," she said. "You have no idea. I hope you have no idea."

This sounded very fraught. He tried to take a deep breath and the gunshot wound got in his way; he was aware his bomb hostage would only get him so far. What did he do now? Fall down the stairs and die? Land on a pile of bombs and?--

What did Peter Lukas always have a gift for? Skiving off. He disappeared.

There was a story about the Lonely, about the boys of the Lukas family, that they did well for themselves as long as they walked the line. On one side of the line was attachment, settling down, throwing your loyalties in. That was Evan, but others before him. That was failure and death. They never really spoke of the other side, maybe because it was seen as a little sacred--but no one wanted to go there anyway. Where did you go when you really got lost, properly? Not the sacrifices, but somewhere else? There was a little bit of apocrypha that said that was what their _becoming_ really was, before Robert Smirke got in and muddied it all with his apotheosis theology: when they really get lost, and can't find anyone again.

The hotel was empty. Peter, somewhat out of it, carried his bomb into the lobby. He frowned at it. It probably defeated the purpose of all he was doing if he just left it in the lobby. So he walked from the lobby out into the street, past the abandoned cars, until he got to all the empty boats. He was tempted to find the _Sea Light_ and put it _there_, but that was also probably counterproductive. Anyway, there was no saying it was here. He tossed it into the sea.

After that, he walked back to the hotel. He had a strong suspicion he might be dead or dying, but hoped this had happened after he'd gotten rid of the C4.

He'd told Elias to order him a drink, hadn't he? It had been sort of a quip. Sarcastic. They weren't on good terms. Anyway, he hadn't specified the drink.

He sat down at the bar. There was a Manhattan on it. He liked Manhattans--_How chic_, Elias had said once. Peter picked it up.

* * *

The gravel was digging into the seat of his trousers and he had a crick in his neck from sitting up. Peter blinked awake, in the dark.

Elias shone his cell phone flashlight into his face, which prompted a brief _aaah!_ from him. "Oh, good, you're conscious," said Elias brusquely, rummaging. It was a strange, half-curved wall, which made it even more uncomfortable to sit up against--but Peter's head was now just dully aching. He could feel the splatter of dried blood stiffening his shirt, and the wet of more of it still joining the dried.

"I'm conscious," said Peter, vaguely surprised to find that his voice, of all things, sounded normal. Perhaps subjective--but still, something. "Where--"

"We're in a train maintenance tunnel," said Elias shortly.

So they were. It was a tunnel that was not, in fact, the Hôtel Hermitage lobby bar--just grey, darkened, dingy, covered in rubbish and rat leavings. Peter's vision focused on Elias. He looked better than Peter, certainly, but not very well--his mouth was set in a line that brought out every other line in his face, which Peter found attractive, but certainly didn't look happy. His hair had come a little ruffled and, more than anything, the front of his suit was stained with Peter's blood. If he was concerned or relieved, he didn't show it.

His sleeves were rolled up and he was working open the front of Peter's ruined outfit, which was less seductive than usual. He leaned in to peer in his eyes. "The bullet went through. That's good, because you won't be receiving surgery for a while," he said. "You'll be all right if I can staunch this bleeding and you can eat again."

"I take it you mean sacrifice and not an energy bar," said Peter wearily.

"Can you see me?"

Yes. God only knew.

"Yes. You're wearing the burgundy one, and it's unsalvageable. You have an eyelash on your cheek. Let me--" Peter reached up.

Elias brushed his hand off. He looked grim, and faraway--especially faraway, even for him. The dirty light was unkind to his features.

"I didn't think things would get this far with her," he said.

Peter half-closed his eyes, until Elias shone the light on him again: "Awake," he said. Once he was satisfied that Peter was listening (though what he needed Peter awake for, he didn't explain), he said again, "I didn't think things would get this far. I did try to talk to her. After she attacked you--I talked to her, but I don't think she's in a mood to negotiate. I fear I'm going to have to--"

"Pardon?"

"I mean that I really didn't think she and I--"

"You mean while I was bleeding to death?"

Elias had the grace to look a little abashed, but the sort of abashed that was ready to become defencive, and then put-upon that you ever expected it to be abashed in the first place. This emotional process finished, he moved on to an indifferent shrug. "You were difficult to locate," he said.

"Elias. You know." Peter coughed, mostly for drama. "If I die here, I hope you ask Father if you can lower me into my grave, so you--"

"If you die here, you're going into the nearest bin."

No real arguing with that. Elias scooted up and sat down next to Peter, to join him sitting against the wall: what they were waiting for, Peter wasn't entirely sure. Maybe something from his family. That hadn't occurred to him. Right now it was like they were both getting drunk in some stupid place--getting drunk in some stupid place together, like two mortal kids pretending to be tough, who hadn't become anything yet. They'd both been that once, surely, everyone had. Everyone got the chance to, right?

A breeze, or a draft from a door opening, stirred the air.

Peter rested his head on Elias's shoulder, and Elias put his arm, very carefully, around Peter's. The gentleness of this owed to his wound, certainly, but it had a benevolent air as a result. Peter supposed he was suffering the psychological effect of blood loss.

"You will live," said Elias Bouchard. "And you'll be fine."

God was your father, wasn't he? And then he wasn't any more? Peter believed him.

* * *

They recuperated, and Peter devoured a traveller, in Nice--in a cheap hotel, something between bargain and flophouse. Peter found these comforting, with their nicked walls and dodgy mattresses, and scrubbed-clean chain logos: they felt anonymous. Elias once informed him, of course, that this was the essence of slumming. It probably was. Provided he didn't get infected, he thought, he could walk like a normal man.

"You still have that aeroplane?" enquired Elias. "That was your property, I recall."

"Oh, yes, that--"

Elias's eyebrows went up with the alacrity of someone not expecting to hear a pause on 'that.' Peter, somewhat craving an opioid-based prescription, was unaffected. "I lost it in the last game," he said. "I mean, I staked a great deal to win it, but it was--err, so with these sorts of tournaments, your last bid--"

"You bet your aeroplane on your upcoming match, missed it, and forfeited it?"

Peter made an ambivalent face.

Elias screwed up his forehead, as though something was taking a great deal of willpower: which _was_ unusual, as normally Elias didn't bother with things that took a great deal of willpower. Eventually he said, "I suppose there were mitigating circumstances. This will make things more complicated, however."

They took another train, anyway, and managed to pass Peter off as a normal sort of ill (this was difficult, as his complexion rendered him in the range of 'normal sort of ill' even when he was feeling perfectly hale). From Marseilles, for some complicated reason Peter was not interested in having Elias explain, they chartered a small plane back to the UK. Once they were on it, Peter relaxed again--high up in the air was well and truly protected. Well and truly alone.

Almost. Elias was looking out the window, over the sea.

"Your question?" said Peter, his hand over the back of his eyes.

There was no point in sport if it wasn't good sport. All the same, Elias glanced back at him in a mood that was unreadable. They had opted for seats diagonal from one another in this small plane, rather than opposite: better to give Peter his freedom of motion, they both seemed to agree. In their time at the cheap hotel, Elias had changed into his only remaining usable suit--the new formal black. Sitting upright, he looked as much an affluent business traveller as Peter supposed he looked like a man on death's doorstep. They didn't match, or suit, or even blend into a photographic composition--they looked like two halves of the world.

The ache, the pressure on his nerves, the fever all hadn't gone away. But Peter was content to watch Elias's half of the world, strangely--though breathing felt like cotton batting, suddenly. Heavy. It looked so lovely and remote. Peter wondered if anyone could live there.

"My question for you," said Elias, "is where your highest allegiance lies. Think before you answer. If the truth is uninteresting or obvious, I would still like the truth. But I would like the truth as you value it."

It was nothing Peter expected--or feared. He had much to conceal, and some of it had surfaced in this past week, deadly fast. But the unexpectedness cleared some of the heaviness from him, too, and he did feel briefly unattached--off-balance, off-guard. He would've leaned, normally, affected something rakish, but his body wasn't ready again for pretence.

He thought.

"I've no highest allegiance," he said eventually. "Allegiance is not how I make my decisions. Not how I value my life, or the reality in which I live."

Elias smiled. His unmalicious smiles were the most unnerving--you could see the softness around them, where age touched him and didn't. And the brightness of his eyes. Peter couldn't put a name to the look he had, maybe because he was afraid to.

"You are an unusual person, Peter Lukas," he said.

"Oh, good. Will you put that in your letter of recommendation, Professor?"

"Certainly. You never disappoint," said Elias, and he settled in above the French landscape with his arms crossed. Peter's eyes drifted--"Awake," Elias reminded him again, for some superstitious reason. So he opened them, and while Elias opened another newspaper, Peter idly tried to read it upside down. It didn't really work. He could live with that.


End file.
